The Goblin King
by LeonaWriter
Summary: Down in the underground, the King is awakened.  But he can't be kept in the dark forever - in more than just one way.  Starting out in drabbles.  Marik-as-Pharaoh.
1. Curiosity and Puzzlement

As a young boy, of course Marik was curious. It was only to be expected. His older sister was simply relieved that he was, for now, content with being curious inside the tombs. He was making enough trouble as it was, without inspiring their father's ire by attempting the forbidden and stepping out into the daylight world. She knew it could only in truth be a matter of time, though, but hopefully, it would not be today.

The golden box which housed the broken remains of the Pharaoh's soul which they were entrusted to protect, however, was not what she had ever thought he would turn his attention to.

He must have made his move during the night; not one of them had noticed the theft, and they only realised far too late what he must have done, and that it was even him at all.

He had - to the complete astonishment of them all - almost completed the golden puzzle. He was merely having trouble the last part, when his father came in.

What happened next had not been pleasant. To say that his father had not been pleased would be an understatement of large proportions. The puzzle, pieces, box and all, had been taken back and put securely in its place once again. Marik had been given a strict lecture about how the Pharaoh's soul container, although in the shape of one, was not a simple children's toy for one to simply play with. That the only one capable of completing it at all would be the Pharaoh himself, who they had all been waiting for.

Ishizu had been able to tell, though, that Marik had not been truly listening at all. There was too much defiance in his eyes.

And later, when they were in private and he was resting the smarts from his father's blows, he confided with her.

"But, sister! I felt like I could almost feel it, as though… as though I really could have completed it!"

She didn't say anything. She didn't know what she could say to a thing like that. If he did… what then? And if he never could, then what right had she to take his dreams away?

...

AN: Came from looking at too many pictures of Marik and Yami Marik and wondering what if they were nicer to one another in a non-shippy way.

Interesting, in that due to the AU, a whole LOAD of things would be different. It's very likely I'm going to continue this somehow. Very vaguely planned.


	2. What Wishes Are Made Of

"Please, Ishizu! _Please_!"

Ishizu sighed. Marik was only a month away from his tenth birthday and his initiation, so of course he would want something like this.

"I really want to go! Even if it's just one time! It won't hurt, it can't, can it? I just want to be able to see the sunlight, and feel it on my face, sister! And-"

He was stopped by her hand coming to rest on his own.

"All right… but brother, be care-" She was cut off by Marik launching himself at her, and the resulting hug.

"Thank you! Thank you, thank you, thank you! When can we go? Can we go now?"

"No, Marik, not now! We have to wait. We can go in the morning-"

"Really? We really can?"

"Be patient, Marik. Yes, we will. Once father is asleep. Then, we can go."

Marik let her go, contented that his first - and possibly only - sight of the world above, in the light, was going to come soon. He could wait.

Well, maybe. He could try to be patient, any way. That was the same, after all.

...

As they were leaving for the stairway to the outside world, Marik stopped his sister and asked her to wait there, for just a moment. Confused, she asked why. Marik simply looked up at her, eyes wide.

"Please? Just this one thing. I'll be really quick, I promise!"

She let him. Grateful and excited, he rushed into the main chamber where the Millennium Puzzle was kept in its box, and took it. Now carrying that weight under one arm, he ran back to where he'd left Ishizu as quickly as he could without making too much noise from the loose Puzzle pieces inside the box.

Her reaction was mixed; she knew how much Marik liked to make his attempts at the Puzzle, and how he would say each time that he was closer than the last. She knew that he was careful ever since that first time, not to let their father know what he did. But the Millennium Puzzle was sacred to their clan; not only that, but the solver of the Puzzle would be the Pharaoh.

Regardless of this, though, she allowed him to keep it on him as they went up and out. As long as he didn't draw attention to it, things should be fine.

She _hoped_.

He kept the box under that one arm as though it was the great treasure that it truly was, even as he stepped out into the first sunlight that he'd ever truly felt upon his skin. His other arm shielded his eyes from the brightness, and waved around as he expressed his joy, but the one holding the Puzzle never strayed.

Of that, Ishizu was glad.

The trip to the nearest town was fraught with exclamations of 'What's this?' and 'How come this is like that?' - all the things that a boy several years younger would have been asking, if they had lived out here, living a normal life. But Marik was a Tomb Keeper, and more than that, the Tomb Keeper heir. Of course he didn't know such things. So, she had to explain to him, and be the mother figure that he'd never had.

The questions only got harder and faster when they reached the town itself. How did one explain why there were so many people, when she knew that towns could have far more than they could see here? How to explain that this food they were eating was just simple fare?

Or, interestingly, what a motorcycle was. Or a television.

Her little brother moved around like lightning in a desert storm, darting from place to place with unequalled curiosity, absorbing all of the information he was learning like badly needed rain.

In the middle of all this, every so often he'd get out the Puzzle when he wasn't quite so visible, and she would be able to hear that distinctive _clack clack-clack, click_ noise that she'd become so used to. And he'd put it away again the moment they moved on, sometimes trying to save his progress, or hiding what he'd done behind something he'd picked up off the wayside.

Except that then the click-clacking started slowing. And he turned to face her, with an increasingly frustrated, depressed look.

"I want to do those things - I want to be able to ride on a, a motorcycle! And watch a TV! But..." He glanced down at the box he was carrying, and the Puzzle that was looking more and more like a pyramid. "As long as I'm a Tomb Keeper... as long as I'm just looking after this... I'll never be able to ride on a motorcycle _or _watch a TV..."

With this, Ishizu knew that they had spent too long in the outside world. Marik had already seen too much.

"Come, Marik! We need to go!"

"Ah-! But!"

"Now, Marik. Didn't you say that you'd obey me, and that we'd only stay here for a short while?"

He came along grudgingly, but only a few steps further and they were confronted with an unfamiliar man in a turban blocking their way. He had an air about him that caused her to stand stock still in shock, Marik holding himself back behind her.

"The Pharaoh will soon return to this world," the man said. "Prepare for him."

Ishizu backed away a step, before realising that as an outsider, he couldn't possibly know of who they were.

"Wait, who _are _you?"

The man continued as though he hadn't even been asked. As though the question were not important.

"Ready yourselves right now. Your lives, and your destinies, depend on it. But I must warn you - if you reject your sacred duty, the future will bring nothing but tragedy."

With that, he turned away from them, and even as Ishizu called out for him to wait - how did he _know _all of these secrets? - he vanished, either from the crowd or by other means, she couldn't tell.

They looked around regardless, frantically worried. Finally, Marik asked her what had been on both of their minds, but which she had been too tactful to say.

"Sister, who was that man? Didn't you see it? He had an ankh around his neck, similar to the treasure our family protects!"

"Marik! We shouldn't talk of those things in this world!" She hissed at him, hopefully not alerting anyone to how there were such things any more than he had.

"I-I'm sorry..."

"All the things you've seen in this world, and the man we just saw - you must completely forget about them!"

Marik's downcast face told her everything she needed to know about how he took that. But there was no other choice.

"I understand, Ishizu... but!"

"...Marik. Let's go home."

...

The walk home seemed far longer than it actually was.

Even so, Marik spent most of the journey working away at the Puzzle, thinking over the events of the day. How he would love to one day be free to ride a motorcycle and watch a TV. Wondering how that stranger had known so much about the Tomb Keepers. Trying not to remember how, in just a few short months, he'd have to receive the initiation of the Tomb Keepers himself.

_Click. Cli-clack._

He wanted to be a better Pharaoh than that. That was what he'd kept telling himself, ever since he'd first picked up the box that held the Puzzle pieces he was now putting together. He wanted to be the kind of Pharaoh who wouldn't make children have to go through so much pain just to carry the secret to someone's memories who was long gone. He'd live in the light, like he'd seen all of those people do in that town.

_Clacka-kan. Clunk._

Everyone kept on telling him - Ishizu, Rishid, his father, the other Tomb Keepers - that he shouldn't be trying to solve the Puzzle. That he was only a keeper of the tomb, a guardian of memories.

_Cli-click._

But he was sure. Sure that he'd felt... something, so many times. From the Puzzle itself. Almost urging him on, encouraging him not to stop.

_Clicka, clicka, clicka... kun._

He was sure that if he solved the Puzzle, then he would be able to do all the things that he could only otherwise dream of.

_Ka-kun_.

Ishizu opened the trapdoor back into the darkness, and he resigned himself, if at least temporarily, to the fate of his life. Even if it simply wasn't _fair_.

And then Ishizu noticed something strange on the mechanism that opened the trapdoor, something that scared her, for a reason Marik couldn't yet fully understand.

He followed her down the long, spiralling stairway, down into their home, further, into the main chamber from which they could hear terrifying - to Marik, at least - noises.

Rishid. _Rishid!_

Father must have found out.

He must know that they had gone out, and, even worse than that, because Marik had _taken the Millennium Puzzle with him_.

It could have been stolen. A piece might have gone missing. He might have dropped one. Anything could have happened.

And Marik knew this, he _knew_, he really did, but he had to have the chance. To see the daylight and feel sunlight on his skin and take a chance to attempt the Puzzle without fear, if only for a couple of hours.

And now Rishid was lying face down on the stone cold floor, body bloody and beaten by Marik's own father's whip.

_I never wanted this. I never wanted Rishid to be hurt. And I don't want Ishizu to be next. I wish I could protect them. If there's nothing else I can do-!_

His hands moved without thought.

_Clack._

And after that, he couldn't remember.

...

AN: Well, that's longer than the first chapter... *shot*

And from here on? This is where things get complicated. Because from here on, it doesn't exactly follow canon so much. As if it did before...


	3. All Hail the Pharaoh

When Marik next became aware, everyone was staring at him.

He didn't understand why. Only that they were. So of course his first instinctive reaction was to think that something was wrong, and that he was the one who had made it go wrong - otherwise, they wouldn't be staring at him.

Also, he couldn't remember whatever it was that had them staring at him in the first place.

Even his father was looking at him strangely. He didn't usually look at him like that, though, which was most of what was worrying Marik.

As though he was something special. Someone to be looked up to. Someone to be afraid of.

And if he were honest with himself, Marik would easily say that it scared him. Just a little, but it scared him.

Rishid was awake, at least. He was looking better than he had before Marik's blackout. He thought that was what it was called, anyway.

"Ishizu...?" One of his hands drifted toward his chest in a moment of self conscious worry. "Sister? What... what happened? What's wrong?"

Even Ishizu had 'that' look on her face. As though he was different now, somehow, to the little brother she'd had before.

But she knelt down to be at his level, putting one hand on his shoulder.

"Nothing bad, brother. I promise you."

"Really?" He wasn't quite sure what to believe. They were still staring at him.

She smiled, even if it was a strange one, fraught with so many conflicting emotions that the nine year old couldn't possibly hope to catch all of them.

"Look."

That was all she said, as her hand guided his down to the thing that now rested around his neck, hard and smooth and glinting in firelight. The grooves from where the pieces had slotted together were still there, able to be felt by sensitive fingertips as they ghosted across its face, mind hardly believing what senses told it.

This was the Millennium Puzzle. Completed.

"Master Marik," started one of the Tomb Keepers. Another quieted him with a motion.

Marik looked back at them all with new eyes. This, then, must be why they were staring at him. No one else had completed it.

"Pharaoh," another started, with dawning realisation. "The Pharaoh! The Pharaoh has returned in Master Marik!"

"All hail the Pharaoh! All hail Master Marik!"

The cry reverberated around the underground, garnering more and more attention until Marik wasn't sure what to do. Until he was surrounded by Tomb Keepers bowing their faces to the dirt in front of him, and the only ones by his side were his sister, Ishizu, and his brother, Rishid.

...

AN: And here you see WHY this story goes AU from here on. He's not going to remember what his other self does for quite a while, but it will eventually happen.

And the Shadow Game that happens instead of Yami Marik killing Marik's father? I don't know. Something non-lethal, but designed to teach the old man a REAL LESSON.

/Short chapter is short as I post these up to Tumblr first. Last chapter was longer because I compiled three segments into one chapter... but this one had an author's note of its own, and I didn't want to mess that up./


	4. Trust and Promises

Back in his room some hours later, Marik was sitting hunched up on his bed, back against the wall and knees against his chest.

It felt like he had done something wrong. Or at the very least, done something that had changed everything - and really, the two weren't much different. Not when everything had stayed the same for so many hundreds and hundreds of years, right up until now.

He barely noticed his sister slide through and into his room.

"…Marik."

Her voice was soft, quiet, and a sigh that was only just noticed. He lifted his head up off of his knees to look at her. His eyes, though dry, were wide and full of confusion.

"…Ishizu. I did… something wrong, didn't I…"

He trailed off, and looked away. His sister came and sat down on the bed next to him, not quite putting an arm around him, but being there.

"No, brother. If there is one thing that we know, it is that you did nothing wrong. Please, believe this."

"But…" He shook his head, uncomprehending. "Everyone was staring at me! And they were talking about me, all the time! And they sounded _angry_!"

Because, of course if they were sounding angry, and they were talking about him, then they had to be angry _at_ him.

"No, brother… that's not it at all…"

They fell into a hush, broken only by the rare sound of footsteps outside in the corridor, and their own breathing.

Then, Ishizu remembered.

"Marik?"

"Hm?"

"Brother… you solved the Millennium Puzzle…"

Marik's face immediately brightened, and he started to smile. It was tempered slightly given the circumstances of its completion, but even so, it was an event to be celebrated.

Ishizu's expression wavered between worry, pride, and relief at his happier mood, but she needed to know.

"…Do you remember anything from, ah… after that?"

He blinked, once again confused, but this time for a different reason.

"…no. No, I don't. I- nothing! Is- is this why everyone was all… but you said they weren't upset at me, but…?"

"You did nothing wrong, brother. Just remember that. No matter what you do, you did nothing wrong. Remember, and believe that you _will_ do nothing wrong. And above all, believe in yourself. Can you do that, Marik?"

Marik stared at his sister, taken aback. But, hands clenched around the puzzle, he nodded slowly.

"I- I'll try. I _promise_ I'll try my best! Okay, Ishizu?"

Ishizu nodded, and without any invitation, her younger brother, and bearer of the Pharaoh's Millennium Puzzle, sidled up to her, nestling his head on her lap.


End file.
